The professional-conversationalist disguise: JOI cannot hear his ten-year-old son

pivotal · 1 April YTMP (Tucks Medicated Pad, ~2003)

• When: 1 April YTMP; roughly one year before JOI's death (event 17)
• What: Believing (in a recurring "hallucination") that ten-year-old Hal never speaks, JOI rents an office and disguises himself as a hired "professional conversationalist," having the Moms send Hal biking uphill to "converse." Hal, who talks the whole time — reciting the O.E.D. definition of "implore," taking soda, offering to leave — slowly recognizes his father under the fake nose, running mustache, and unmistakable Interdependence-Day argyle sweater-vest, and the reveal collapses into JOI's grief that every attempt ends "in terror: you staring, me swallowing," the exact silence he'd suffered with his own father (event 1; and the twin of the scene-170 silence-delusion in event 5). The scene also seats JOI's public profile from Hal's mouth: "a towering figure in optical and avant-garde film circles and single-handedly founded the Enfield Tennis Academy but drinks Wild Turkey at like 5:00 A.M. and pitches over sideways during dawn drills." [Bears on the death and its open motive: JOI's failure/desperation "to reach Hal" is surfaced here and left unresolved.] Dating/identity clash: JOI "had listed [Hal] as fourteen," but Hal insists "I'll be eleven in June" (i.e. ~10) — as printed.